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Xavier said,"One of the intriguing aspects of random processes is that it is hard to know whether a process is truly random..................------------------------------------------ I beg to differ. For example, if you and I are gambling on the flip of a coin the cautious fellow would question if the coin flip is honest, i.e., without bias. If a test run of one thousand flips results in one thousand "heads" a prudent person might decline to gamble on it. Additionally, if the coin test run produces 500 heads and 500 tails a prudent person would avoid gambling in that case also. There are mathematical formulas that predict the probability of each test, so it is always a statistical thing. Both outcomes are unlikely, but the occurrence of one thousand "heads" in a row are astronomically improbable. It is true that it is hard to know if the coin flip is "fair" without a very long series, but the series will produce a likelihood that the coin is "fair" the more flips are included in the preliminary test. I still fail to see the mystery here.

However, my dear ol' mother gave me good advice as I left home to seek my fortune in the world, she said, "Son, don't ever gamble on another man's game. If someone wants to bet you that he can make the jack of spades jump out of a deck of cards and urinate in your ear, if you take him up on that bet you are going to wind up with an ear full of urine."

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Everett, do you realize that the quote you are attributing to me here is actually from the section I quoted myself from wiki, a section that discusses the difference between randomness and unpredictability? Here it is again, and btw, I agree with it but I must underscore that it is discussing the difference between randomness and unpredictability. What you attributed to me is the first sentence of the second paragraph and I think it is a quite valid obsevation in context,

"Randomness, as opposed to unpredictability, is an objective property. Determinists believe it is an objective fact that randomness does not in fact exist. Also, what appears random to one observer may not appear random to another. Consider two observers of a sequence of bits, when only one of whom has the cryptographic key needed to turn the sequence of bits into a readable message. For that observer the message is not random, but it is unpredictable for the other.

"One of the intriguing aspects of random processes is that it is hard to know whether a process is truly random. An observer may suspect that there is some 'key' that unlocks the message. This is one of the foundations of superstition, but also a motivation for discovery in science and mathematics.

"Under the cosmological hypothesis of determinism, there is no randomness in the universe, only unpredictability, since there is only one possible outcome to all events in the universe. A follower of the narrow frequency interpretation of probability could assert that no event can be said to have probability, since there is only one universal outcome. Under the rival Bayesian interpretation of probability, there is no objection to useing probabilities to represent a lack of complete knowledge of outcomes.

"Some mathematically defined sequences, such as the decimals of pi..., exhibit some of the same characteristics as random sequences, but because they are generated by a describable mechanism, they are called pseudorandom. To an observer who does not know the mechanism, a pseudorandom sequence is unpredictable.

"Chaotic systems are unpredictable in practice due to their extreme sensitivity to initial conditions. Whether or not they are unpredictable in terms of computability theory is a subject of current research. At least in some disciplines of computability theory, the notion of randomness is identified with computational unpredictability.

"Individual events that are random may still be precisely described en masse, usually in terms of probability or expected value. For instance, quantum mechanics allows a very precise calculation of the half-lives of atoms even though the process of atomic decay is random. More simply, although a single toss of a fair coin cannot be predicted, its general behavior can be described by saying that if a large number of tosses are made, roughly half of them will show up heads. Ohm's law and the kinetic theory of gases are non-random macroscopic phenomena that are assumed random at the microscopic level."

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"In this paper, we postulate that it is the transition to context-dependent causation—mediated by the onset of information control—that is the key defining characteristic of life. We therefore identify the transition from non-life to life with a fundamental shift in the causal structure of the system, specifically a transition to a state in which algorithmic information gains direct, context-dependent, causal efficacy over matter."

I was reminded of Keith's God of the gaps pronouncements in earlier post about the validity of evolution and its inability to solve how life began. On the Skeptics Guide to the Universe dated December 15, 2012, they alluded to a paper (cited above) written by Sara Walker and Paul Davies which proposes a radically different approach to the origin Gordian Knot.

Rather than taking the traditional way and attempting to define conditions and chemical that were necessary to create the first self replicating molecules, the paper is proposing first to define what life is and then approach the problem from information theory vantage point. Though I barely understand what they are saying, they seem to be suggesting that we figure out how information was stored and transferred by molecules in manner that it could react to environmental conditions.

I am reading the paper now. I suggest that those that are legitimately interested in the question (including Keith) read it also. This is not to say that this is the definitive methodology that will emerge as the "answer". But it is an example of how science works. Up until now, the origin question appeared answerable through RNA. RNA is not ordinarily thought of as life because it cannot self replicate. But it can replicate by invading the nucleus of a living cell and turning that cell into a factory replicating more of the RNA sequence. We think of RNA as virus' when they do this living organisms.

Since Keith thinks that this is the Holy Grail that demonstrates that information could not be conveyed by a set of inanimate chemicals , solving this puzzle would bridge yet one more gap. if in fact science solves this puzzle, will Keith be satisfied? Well fear not Keith. Science has heard you and they are working away to help you out.

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Greg, so what's new. If you are really interested in the subject you may want to read Norbert Wiener's "Cybernetics," and when you are through with that, move on to study Jay Forrester's System Dynamics. Wiener was a teacher to both Forrester and Claude Shannon, and his concepts and mathematics influenced both of them deeply.

In reading the article you referenced you may also want to keep in mind its footnote 3,

?3 The question of whether a causal chain expressed in informational language at the system level can ultimately be reduced, at least in principle, to a mechanistic causal chain at the molecular level, is the subject of a longstanding debate, complicated by the fact that biological systems are always open. We make no attempt to engage this notorious philosophical topic here, because it is irrelevant for the present discussion whether information is in fact a fundamental causal agent (which would represent a radical departure from standard physics), or may be treated merely phenomenologically as an effective causal agent.

With that as background you may then want to move to Open Thermodynamic Systems, Non-equilibrium Thermodynamics, and Ilya Prigogine. Wiki says of Prigogine:

"Dissipative structure theory led to pioneering research in self-organizing systems, as well as philosophical inquiries into the formation of complexity on biological entities and the quest for a creative and irreversible role of time in the natural sciences.

"His work is seen by many as a bridge between natural sciences and social sciences...

"Prigogine's formal concept of self-organization was used also as a 'complementary bridge' between General Systems Theory and Thermodynamics, conciliating the cloudiness of some important systems theory concepts with scientific rigour."

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I''m not the one who says it couldn't have happened. Why don't you inform Keith. With all of these references, then why did you not respond when he wrote :

"rreducible complexity means that in any complex material mechanism, which of course is life's makeup, there is a level of complexity below which small, mindless, evolutionary processes cannot be the driving mechanism of the machine.

There is a fast-paced growing body of knowledge of the complex level of these micro machines, and as the micro-complexity grows, it becomes mathematically clear that no amount of time in our universe could have allowed for the sheer number of random occurrences required to create it all."

Maybe all those references should be made to him. You seem allow for all sorts of intellectual mischief from your compadres when you actually know better.

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Greg, I didn't respond to Keith because he is right; go back to my post to Everett about randomness versus unpredictability, superstition versus science and mathematics. You are the one that doesn't seem to understand that we don't know the beginning, we are likely to never know, and that Faith applies equally to the material as to the metaphysical--e.g. it is only an assumption that nothing can travel faster than the speed of light; do you really believe time stops or that mass can be infinite when we dont have a clue about dark matter, dark energy and what happens inside a black hole? You don't really understand the laws of nature and you are just not paying attention to what others in this forum say. Anything and everything that doesn't fit Greg's Beliefs you reject out of hand; you don't even acknowledge it which makes me think it just goes right by you.

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Xavier, Apparently I have the whole scientific community behind.me They refuse to accept that we can't know more. So is it your contention that we should accept Keith's notion of things. That life could not have happened from natural processes. You want to frame this as my beliefs for obvious reasons, But to do that is to ignore the intellects much better than me who are out there figuring it out. Could it be that your side loses validity when science lerches forward with an answer?

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<it is only an assumption that nothing can travel faster than the speed of light>Realtivity theory speaks about the limit of the speed of information = the speed of light not about the travelling sped. Probably we all are now moving in the speed many times more than light in reference to most distance galaxies. The phase speed of Brogle's wave is faster than light; not the group speed.

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GregAnother good post (though we may disagree).Thanks for the link, it's fascinating, in a geekish sort of way.I'm down to the second part of section 4, and it's taking time because I have to keep going back to assure myself that I understand what the authors are saying.

I took a break to reply.Correct me if I'm wrong, but isn't a main factor in your desire to have science explain the origins of life, your disbelief in God?If not, why lessen a good posting by taunting Keith?Disproving God may be your motive, but it is not the motive of the authors of your link, not even a consideration.Reread section 3 "Redefining the problem: algorithmic origin for life".Read it carefully. It seems to gives others the ability to claim that all scientific evidence presented by you to date, is insufficient.To me, section 4 is fascinating, I work in the machining industry.It's titled "Turing, von Neumann and undecidability in the origin of life" (notice the change, "origin for life" in the earlier sections has become "origin of life").Working with computer numerical control machines since their conception and the manual version that predated them, John von Neumann is not a new name to me.What is new is his dominant presence in this paper.And Greg, it's not supportive of your view, not in my opinion.Section 4 begins,"The instructional, or algorithmic, nature of biological information was long ago identified as a key property, and an early attempt to formalize it was made by von Neumann. He approached the problem by asking whether it was possible to build a machine that could construct any physical system, including itself."Now, if I'm correct, von Neumann succeeded in this hypothetical by building on Alan Turing's "a-machine", von Neumann added the "universal constructor".

Now, if for the sake of the paper, von Neumann's machine represents "life", who would the original builder of the machine represent? And remember John von Neumann's question, was it possible to build such a machine

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James said: "Disproving God may be your [Greg's] motive, but it is not the motive of the authors of your link, not even a consideration.

Exactly right. If anything papers like this and Prigogine's work, which is why I quoted him, illustrate how very complex and opaque are social and biological systems, and why I say that we are a long, long way, if ever, of understanding them completely and totally, particularly their ultimate origins.

Of course that frustrates and disarms Greg so much that he chooses to accuse me of suggesting that the scientific community "can't know more." So, yes, Greg's only agenda is to prove that there is no God and if anyone or anything gets in his way, he is quite ready to hurl at them as much distortion and misdirection as necessary, particularly when he is shown that what he offers is insufficient to his case.

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Do not be sure. Phase speed of Broglie's waves is faster than light; the group speed -no, sure.There is a lot of mistakes on it even by physicists- Penrose on "twin paradox", even by Einstein (he admitted it to Schlegel, his friend, who correctly interprets it because there is not an absolute reference system) I do not see the reliable information on the speed of expansion of Universe (in reference to Earth, we do not have other choice); Relativity theory does not limit the speed of expansion, but....the natural mistakes in telescopes on measuring the change in brightness of objects (stars, galaxies) do not allow us to decide the speed is more or less speed of light.

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hallmarks of life:global organizationinformation as a causal agencytop-down causationanalogue and digital information processinglaws and states coevolvelogical structure of a UCdual hardware and software roles of genetic materialnon-trivial replicationphysical separation of instructions (algorithms) from the mechanism that implements them

As i struggle to understand Sara Walker's finer points on how life originated, she wants to focus attention on how the "software" of life was created rather than the hardware. To do this she cites the work of two titans of computer science, Allan Turing and John von Neumann. it seems that quite a lot is known about how information can be stored by molecular structures. What is not know is how that a molecule could use information to react to the environment.

She states that solving the puzzle may involve speculation on the computational aspects of life. She sets out that a computer capable of building or replicating a pattern of chemicals over and over would be required.

"By analogy with Turing's universal machine, he therefore devised an abstraction called a universal-constructor (UC), a machine capable of taking materials from its host environment to build any possible physical structure (consistent with the available resources and the laws of physics) including itself."

This computer would be essentially an analog computer. However, a purely analog computer is not what life is. Life stores the instructions for replication digitally. And not only must there be digital storage but a supervisor which turns on the digital blueprinting or the analog processing part of the gene.

" To avoid an infinite regress, in which the blueprint of a self-replicating UC contains the blueprint which contains the blueprint … ad infinitum, von Neumann proposed that in the biological case the blueprint must play a dual role: it should not only contain instructions such as an algorithm,to make a certain kind of machine (e.g. the UC) but should also be blindly copied as a mere physical structure, without reference to the instructions its contains, and thus reference itself only indirectly. This dual hardware/software role mirrors precisely that played by DNA, where genes act both passively as physical structures to be copied, and are actively read-out as a source of algorithmic instructions"

It seems that von Neumann anticipated the structure of DNA before its structure was actually known. By describing how inanimate proteins became self replicating computers is the riddle that must be solved. Walker goes on to say:

"It makes sense to try to explain life's origin only if it resulted from processes of moderately high probability, so that we can reasonably expect to give an account in terms of known science. It then follows from simple statistics that there will have been a large ensemble of systems proceeding down the pathway toward life, and no obvious reason why only one member successfully completed the journey. Ideally then, there should be a parameter, or more probably a set of parameters, to quantify progress towards life. The causal efficacy of distributed information control, discussed throughout this paper, provides a plausible candidate parameter that includes the possibility of identifying states of ‘almost life’."

So rather than throwing up her hands and saying that there is no way it could have happened on its own, Walker has put in place building blocks that if solved will tell us how it happened.

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Ha, Greg, again your own words: "...if solved will tell us how it happened." You pretend or suggest that it is all just a matter of a little more reasoning and science, yet even if solved what you wrote would still leave open and unresolved the questions of why, when and from where.

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Maybe I’m reading you wrong, Xavier, but you seem to be suggesting that we simply can’t know everything. That, of course, is an assumption itself. Certainly, now that we “know” just how much knowledge exists (as opposed to a Middle Eastern shepherd of the Iron Age, perhaps), we can safely assign a probability of “low” to the notion that we will ever know everything, but nonetheless there is no logical impediment to knowing everything (per se). I think Greg’s point is that science is our best way of learning new things, while faith is simply holding fast to things that we already know or think we know. I think you are trying to directly equate science with faith, which is a mistake. You may seek to place empiricism on trial—to challenge the inherent assumption empiricists make about the validity of empiricism itself—but that is a much broader argument.

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I think the assertion that we cannot know everything is probably correct. The reasoning for this is that we can only study that which we can observe or experience. Scientific knowledge is gained by studying observable phenomena and is considered reliable knowledge if repeated observations are consistent. The other kind of knowledge is that which we experience first hand which is filtered through our own world view.

We can only view the universe through the 4 dimensions that we can perceive and so if there exists other dimensions, as has be hypothesized by prominent physicists, we cannot yet know what exists in those dimensions. Furthermore, we are limited to the small part of the universe that we can see and since the universe is still expanding at velocities greater than the speed of light, there will be parts of the universe that we will not be able to observe. Lastly, the only knowledge of our past is from historical records, oral tradition, and archaeology, vast amounts of historical knowledge have been lost to us.

As a scientist, I believe that science shows us everyday just how ignorant we are. In the process of finding the answer to one question, we inevitably raise new ones, and in searching for those answers, we find new questions to explore, ad infinitum.

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Hi everyone! Hope you all had an excellent Christmas and are planning on enjoying your New Year’s Eve somewhere nice.

I don’t think I have enough time to catch up on all the posts I missed over the past four days; it just gets too busy in here to keep track. I did notice that Keith heard from Jim O., which is great! I do miss Jim and his many personalities (though less so the personalities that created WSJ accounts) ;)

I trust everyone is in good health. My eighty six year-old grandmother spent Christmas in the hospital with a nasty cold, but she is recovering steadily and still got a good bunch of presents. Seems like it might be a rough winter season for illness, so batten down the hatches and keep a hefty supply of Vitamin C on hand.

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Let's not forget about your cousin from Southern Texas who follows, you Zach, with all his friends in trail. That was a nice little avatar that you created there. Look forward to hearing from him again soon. Hope your grandmother feels better!

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Oh I remember that whole business. I thought you were just kidding around with that accusation. Surely you know me better than that, Keith. I categorically reject such deceits as morally unsound, simply because deceiving honest and sincere people for the advancement of one’s own image is something I take no part in. I must say, though, I find it strange that you would hunt so doggedly for a deceit that wasn’t there while ignoring the one that obviously was. Do you regularly ignore the deceits of others just because they are Christian, or because they agree with you?

On a more practical note, wasn’t your whole issue that the picture (avatar) of a random poster bore similarities to me? I believe the individual had blond hair; Xavier and I are friends on Facebook, and he can attest that no one in my family from Texas is blond (a few of the New York clan are blond, but they look nothing like me). Unlike some others, I have no problem showing my real face and identity here. After putting all that out in the open, why would I intentionally deceive you using the picture of a lookalike cousin that I don’t have? Certainly there are billions of other people’s faces on the internet, so it would make absolutely no sense to use a family member’s face, especially if that family member looked like me.

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Zach. It's just that we never received a second message from that guy, who seemed so engaged with you and what you were saying here on this blog. The message didn't ring "true" to me, and it's impossible to know what's going on in this blog environment, unless you are WSJ, so it seemed like that guy and all his friends who follow you were simply made up...but I can't be sure. Just as you and Greg can't be sure about those other Avatars you guys thought were Jim's conception that you obviously continue to perseverate on.

I wouldn't bring that stuff up again, If I were you, especially in the context of assassinating someone's character...as you said in your posting above...it hurts...and that's not what we should be into here.

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I appreciate your scientific approach, and from a purely empiricist perspective, I would agree with you. However, knowledge is not gained only by “studying observable phenomena” and “experiencing [things] first hand.” There is also the rationalist school of epistemology to consider; that is, acquiring knowledge by means of logical deduction and induction.

Unfortunately, the balancing act between the two is a game that philosophers and scientists alike have been playing for thousands of years. If there is a perfect balance, I don’t think anyone knows where it lies (I certainly don’t). We can only hope to reconcile empiricism and rationalism with each other by keeping the conclusions we reach by using them consistent; for now, the foundational paradox must remain unsolved.

I’m not arguing that we can easily know everything, or that the human species will ever grow to know everything, or that for any being to know everything is a probability. I’m simply arguing that it is logically possible. What if dimensions beyond our current powers of observation do not actually exist (they are only theories, after all)? What if we eventually gain the technology to observe the parts of the universe or alternate dimensions that we currently cannot? What about technology that would allow us to peer into the past?

Now, if the universe is infinite, knowledge may be infinite. That would require a (mostly, haha) omniscient being like the Christian God to surmount. However, I think that it is a logical mistake to assume that our current limitations in finding knowledge will apply to whatever we have become, say, fifty thousand years from now.

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Among others, you said: "As a scientist, I believe that science shows us everyday just how ignorant we are. In the process of finding the answer to one question, we inevitably raise new ones, and in searching for those answers, we find new questions to explore, ad infinitum." I strongly suspect that that is also true of the complexity we add to our social systems with every new change, at least in the direction in which we have been going thus far (one solution I have proposed, btw, is to build robustness into our systems by keeping the parts small enough that failures don't overcome the whole).

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Zach, as kids we used to joke saying "if my grandmother had wheels..." Are you saying it is logically possible to work one's way that outcome if we start at the right point and have the right evolutionary mutations? I'd love to imagine how she would have looked, or for that matter how one of my very distant successors might look with wheels.

As to what I said or did not to Greg, please do me the favor of reading carefully what I wrote. I know Greg carries too much emotional bagagge, what with God constantly after him, so he can't, but you can.

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I am indeed saying that. Interestingly, you use a counterfactual conditional as an example; counterfactual thinking is a key tenet of Molinism, an old school of thought that sought to reconcile the logical fallacy inherent in believing in both an omniscient Christian God and God-given free will. Counterfactual propositions themselves are logical statements, but as inductive statements they require support from other syllogisms.

Counterfactuals can certainly be regarded as knowledge. Consider the following statement: “If the U.S. had followed a path of economic austerity over the past three decades, we would not be suffering from our current financial woes.” Would you consider such a statement to be something you “know”?

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Thanks for the reply Zach. Yes, epistemology and rationality are ways to obtain knowledge without empirical observations. I forgot to mention it, but did not mean that it is not real knowledge.

I don't understand what "logically possible" means since a conclusion drawn from false premises is logical, but not rationally sound. If you mean that the attainment of all possible knowledge is a rational concept then the argument would seem to hinge on a few premises: 1. There is a finite amount of knowledge, 2. All knowledge is able to be discovered by man, 3. Man will continue to steadily acquire knowledge, 4. There is enough time for man to acquire all knowledge. I can think of good arguments against at least 2 of these premises, so I would not consider the conclusion to be rationally sound.

I can say that I know the next stop sign I see will be red and because all stop signs in the US are red and I drive in the US, since the premises are known facts. However, can one truly say that they know a conclusion is true from premises that have yet to be proven true?

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First off, excellent evaluation. However, I believe you are misplacing the burden of proof. After all, the argument that we cannot know everything requires that (a) there is an infinite amount of knowledge and/or (b) there is knowledge that cannot be discovered by man. Unless we prove that the universe is infinite, the universe is finite, and thus things are finite. Since things are by definition knowable, knowledge is thus finite. Additionally, the concept of knowledge as we humans understand it is in many ways DEFINED by our own existence; after all, our ability to imagine things that we cannot know allows us, in a sense, to know those things. For example, if we theorize about other dimensions that we can’t know about, we are essentially beginning the process of knowing those dimensions.

The type of reasoning you use in your last paragraph is logical induction, which also allows us to assume that man will continue to steadily gain knowledge. As for man having enough time, well, that has more to do with physical constraints than the actual “knowability” of all things.

Induction is a key factor this conversation. After all, your example only holds up under induction. Deductively, experience is inadmissible as knowledge; just because every other stop sign in the U.S. is red does not logically mean the one you are approaching will be red. Think of flipping a perfectly-balanced coin: Even if it lands on heads one thousand times, the probability of the coin landing on tails is still fifty percent.

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<Yes, epistemology and rationality are ways to obtain knowledge without empirical observations.> What do you mean? Any knowledge you get is based on sensual@visible data of physical concrete individuals, like ex. the position of sth on the screen of TV recording system. From it follows chains of inferences: deductions, reductions (inductions),...Do not confuse statements and meta-statements (sentences)- the truth of a sentence with the truth of a formula, other wise you are going into bush

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Zach, had I known that you are "indeed saying that" it is logically possible that my grandmother can have wheels, I would have approached my "debate" with you entirely differently. The technique can occasionally be useful but it rightly stretches credulity for those who are not aware of what you are doing. Indeed, I would even call it a game that you are playing, which may be fun for those who like to do logic for logic’s sake, but it is precisely because when in a tight debating situation you often fall back to playing the game when for others it isn’t, that I often get frustrated with you.

Setting aside the terminology of logic (I have made clear before that I am not into formal logic) I don't for a moment consider that kind of statement equivalent to saying that "If the U.S. had followed a path of economic austerity over the past three decades, we would not be suffering from our current financial woes.” I don't do so because I have ample empirical evidence, which I have presented many times, to suggest that that statement in fact has a high probability of being true, so with all the caveats that always go with saying such a thing, I would actually say that it is something “I know.”

As to the caveats, anyone trained in science or engineering never says that any particular chain of events is known or true with certainty. As Tao points out, there are things that we don’t just don’t know and may never know. Indeed, it often drives me nuts when I hear some of the hedging done in statements that are made for public consumptions, like when scientists say that they can not say categorically that a nuclear electric generation cannot go critical.

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The bureaucrats in D.C. dupe the public routinely...they lie about resignations...and the only ones in Congress who maintain a firm position on cleaning up the mess are mocked by the leftist mainstream media as being "extremists."

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Your right KeithAnd it's the fault of the mainstream media that the public is routinely duped.They have become propagandists for the Democratic party. They forget the reason the Bill of Rights to the Constitution gave them a special place in American society.A few decades ago a President was forced to resign, not because of high crimes and misdemeanors, not because people died, and not because a congressional investigation had discovered some nefarious act.No, it was because a free press would not settle for the administration's version of the truth as the last word.The free press highlighted the coverup and lies to the American people.

In Benghazi people died, the administration embarked on a concerted effort to cover up, the President and his people outright lied to the American people about what happened.Where is the free press, striving to get to the truth?Where are the Woodward and Bernstein types?Where is "deep throat"?

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Let's suppose that religion is not necessary for morality, what is the rationale for believing the world would be a better place to live if religion did not exist? Are any wars fought purely on religious grounds without political motives? Of course there are lots of fundamentalists who have been indoctrinated to believe in violent religious ideologies, but if religion did not exist, do you think they would not simply be indoctrinated to believe in violent political ideologies?

Sorry, I did not go through the 700 pages of discussion to check if this was previously settled. =)

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They very well might. However, the question does not assume that the world would be better with violent political ideologies but without religion. What about a world without either? Or, perhaps slightly more realistically, a world with less of both?

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You see Zach, when you say "a world without either" you are again just playing games and you lose all credibility or desire on anyone's part to engage in serious conversation with you. If you can believe that then others can believe in God and if they engage you it is only in defense of their rightful beliefs.

Moreover, if that is the case, and since you say that negative criticisms flow in both directions, please tell me when have you ever defended utopia, or an empathy gene, or perfect education as possible actual realities and others criticized you for them? And please don't point fingers at me because all I have done when you posited them is ask how we get there.

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You're right, if the world were devoid of violent political ideology but violent religious ideology existed, the abolition of religion might lead to a more peaceful world. But I too think that world is too good to be true.

Allow to me re-phrase my point. Many atheists argue against religion because they claim that religion corrupts otherwise innocent men. However, I posit that men corrupt the purity of religion to their own benefit and that is the root cause of religion inspired violence. Is the idea of organized religion itself amoral or have we simply not developed a moral religion yet?

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No Tao, it hasn't been settled. Atheists just claim that they are pure and free of ideology. They have somehow been granted purity and perfection, and if they are not quite there yet, then science will get them there very soon. Quite absurd if you ask me but they defend it with passion and it is one of the things that make this forum interesting.

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Xavier, come now; you sometimes seem like the biggest game-player of them all. You continue to misrepresent my position on many things, even though I correct you repeatedly. I know you can read, and I know you are an intelligent person, so what am I to think when you blaze ahead in total dismissal of my explanations?

If you honestly believe I have never argued for the existence of biological empathy, explained its role in developing morality, and discussed in detail how to augment it with improved education, how else can I regard your challenges except as hollow and behind the curve? I even wrote some six or seven paragraphs detailing exactly how I would go about phasing out of the public school system, and you replied, “That’s all fine.”

Is the more elusive Xavier back, who can be answered completely and comprehensively—time and time again—and still never be satisfied? ;)

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No Zach, we talk past each other and don't make progress because you don't read carefully what I said, or forget prior exchanges, and you've done it yet again, although as I indicate below, I did mess up a little this time.

I never said that you have "never argued for the existence of biological empathy, explained its role in developing morality, and discussed in detail how to augment it with improved education." I've even saved what you have written and on occasion played it back to you when you seem to have drifted from them, as I think you did here by pedaling back a little on just how much education is reasonable even with a completely private system, which you know I favor too. Where we have disagreed is on reaching a perfect or sufficient level, and over time you have in fact become almost reasonable; more below.

What I wrote is "please tell me when have you ever defended utopia, or an empathy gene, or PERFECT education as possible actual realities." I'll grant that I messed up a little and that I thought I had written it meaning for perfect to refer both to the empathy gene and to education or knowledge, but you know darn well that it is not the first time I question you on perfect gene and perfect education, or even sufficient empathy and knowledge, and that by them I mean to reach a state of nirvana.

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Yes, you are absolutely correct that I am making my own assumptions when I say that man probably cannot know everything there is to know. However, I would argue that everyone starts from the default position of ignorance and struggles for a lifetime to understand the world he is born into, so saying that one can obtain all the knowledge there is in the universe requires the greater burden of proof. I base my confidence in my statement on the observation that with the rapid increase of knowledge obtained in this century has come an equal increase in what we realize we don't know. Our attempts to reduce the universe to the simplest element has been followed by the discovery that those elements are made of other more reduced elements. Nothing has ever made me think that we may at some point run out of questions to ask.

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That is certainly one premise that is very important to this discussion, but we need not prove that the universe is finite to say that man cannot know all knowledge. I'll go back to my statement about historical knowledge that has already been lost to us. Your response was that someday man will be able to see into the past and will regain that lost knowledge. If you believe that, then you believe it on faith alone, because there is no reason to believe that is plausible.

Then there is the issue that man as a race will likely die out long before the universe does, so we cannot know what comes after. There are many reasons to believe this, but I won't get into it here (unless you really want to know).

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“Unless we prove that the universe is infinite, the universe is finite, and thus things are finite. Since things are by definition knowable, knowledge is thus finite.”

What exactly do you mean by “things are by definition knowable”? You argue then that, contrary to what Tao points out, what there is beyond the visible universe is knowable? Why is God not knowable then?

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I never said that God wasn’t knowable. If he exists, he might certainly be knowable. We might be tussling with any number of forces out there in the big universe; maybe movies like Thor and Prometheus will prove to contain kernels of nonfiction many years from now.

The trick is to understand how we know what we know. I don’t know how many times I must repeat this. Epistemology is the name of the game. Some people know what they know because an old book tells them something is true. Others know things because they “feel” true. Yet others rely on experience, observation, and evidence, and still others rely on logic. Many combine these methods of knowing.

Some people rely on that old book for the big questions, but don’t mind leaning on empiricism when it comes to things like medicine and traffic lights. Rationalism may be employed in parenting (for example), but is then benched when it conflicts with the truth that comes from the old book. Sometimes, in an effort to avoid cognitive dissonance, believers will try and force revealed knowledge to be compatible with rationalism and empiricism even when the conflict between them is clear.

As a logical empiricist, I leave room for many possibilities in the world. Maybe the Christian God exists. Maybe we are an alien science project. Maybe Godzilla is sleeping in Tokyo Bay. Maybe socialism will finally work one of these days. These might all be true. But I require more than an old book as evidence.